Possessed
by ciararose
Summary: There is a creature living in her, a shadowy figure that feeds on her fear. It whispers to her in his voice. It erodes her control, dissolves her resistance, crumbles her will. She is a vessel for her darkest, most selfish desires. She is possessed.


POSSESSED

She could still hear his parting words in her head as she walked through the empty streets, the night air warm on her cheeks, like a soft breath. He held her for an instant too long and she knew that he knew where she was going that night. But he did not fight. He would hold her and whisper to her and not say a word because he wanted to believe in her, he wanted her sweet, honeyed lies to coat his lips when she breathed them into him and disguise the bitter taste of the truth. He told her he loved her and he wanted to think that the words would bring her back to him. She could see the hope, hot and strong in his eyes. If she turned around and returned to him, he would forgive her, and nothing would ever be said of where she was going, why she was walking the streets in the darkness.

But she didn't turn around. She remembered, dully, that hearing his promises once ignited a fire in her heart. He would whisper to her and sparks would dance in her blood, both painful and beautiful, and she would not be satisfied no matter how tightly he held onto her, wishing always to be closer. But she remembered it like a photograph of a beautiful place: flat, the colors imperfect and faded, the truth and beauty of it leeched out by time. Now when he spoke she wished, with heartbreaking simplicity, that he would be silent. His words only reminded her of the promises she made to him, the ones that lay shattered and crunched beneath her feet on this dark sidewalk. He told her he loved her and she swallowed her distaste, not wanting him to see it in her face; felt it slide, with bitter heaviness, into her stomach and rest there, weighing her down. Her disgust had spread like a disease, because first, she was simply remorseful, repulsed by herself and her cruelty, but now she drew away from him, too, and shuddered when he touched her. She could feel his tenderness crawling like an insect across her skin. Her heart was breaking but she did not feel it, it lay before her in pieces and she had no sense of pain, just a vast, hollow emptiness where her love for him had once throbbed.

And so she pulled away. She turned her head from him with a smile, with a comforting word, with an empty assurance, and he smiled back. It was her one small kindness, this deceit, the one thing she could do for him now. There was no sin in her lies, her lies were the best part of her. Because she was not going home, not tonight. Tonight she was descending the steps into Hell, once more, and the night welcomed her. It opened its arms and swallowed her in darkness; in June air warm as a lover's embrace, it drew her forward. She walked away from the one who had given her nothing but sweet, uncompromising devotion. He was, she reflected with aching detachment, so heartbreakingly perfect in every way. He was clever and handsome and unfailingly kind, utterly good to his core. And she was not. She was ripping his loyal heart to pieces, and she felt no guilt. She rarely felt much of anything anymore, except, of course, when she was with _him_.

_He_ was not perfect. _He_ was as flawed, as pitiful and weak a creature as she was, perhaps more so. _He_ was everything she detested: arrogant, cowardly, thoughtless and above all, cruel. And _he_ was disgusted by her, by her blood, everything she came from and everything she stood for. It was sick, the way she desired him, the way her skin rose in shivers at the thought of his hands on it, the way her footsteps quickened when she knew he was near. It was sick the way his gaze lay on her hungrily, devouring her until she thought she could actually feel his eyes consuming her flesh. But her mind lingered on the memory of it when she was not with him. When she saw her reflection in the mirror she imagined herself in _his_ eyes. She had read the stories of innocents invaded by evil spirits and she imagined this was what it felt like- undeniable force, inevitable surrender, a panicked whine in her head that told her she was inhabited by something dark and wicked. He looked at her and she shivered with pleasure to the rhythm of her soul's weakening protests. She was possessed.

She was close now to her destination and she hurried now, until her breath was short and her pulse beat staccato against the rhythm of her footsteps. She could feel his nearness like a tangible presence, a thickness in the air that drew her in and slid over her skin, enveloping her. She descended the stairs and she was stepping into the hot mouth of some hungry beast, and she was willing, eager.

He was waiting for her. He would never have said so but his stillness as he sat at the window betrayed him. Still, when he rose and came toward her he did so fluidly, slowly, and his unhurried, shameless stare was magnificent, repelling her and freezing her in place in the same moment. He had perfected the art of making her want nothing more than to shove him away and making it impossible for her to do so. But she had learned to see the desire beneath his disdain, to read what he was so adept at disguising in the tone of his voice and the movement of his hands, and in the way he lost control, at times, holding onto her so fiercely that it left her breathless and aching. Sometimes she would displease him and he would roar at her to leave, and at times he would say something that would sent her into a rage of hateful passion, and at these times she would storm away, and lay with hot tears of frustration and sorrow coating her cheeks, crystal sacrifices for the life she was throwing away. But not now. Now Regulus Black was standing before her like a vengeful god, his dark eyes molten.

"What did you tell him?" he asked, as though to remind her of the depth of her crimes.

"What do you care?" she asked back daringly. In a few minutes, her boldness would fade. All of the bravado and the false pride would be discarded in the face of ugly, unmistakable truth.

"I don't," he shrugged, taking her coat from her and laying it unceremoniously across the back of a chair. His flat was ridiculously well furnished, of course, and she found it garish and imposing. It suited him, somehow. He had all of the dark good looks of his brother with none of the wild rebellion; he wore his aristocratic features with refined elegance. But there was something predatory in his gaze and his expressions that the best of grooming could not hide.

"He didn't ask me," she admitted, because the truth simply came tumbling out of her before him. Lying to him was pointless; he always knew, and besides, she didn't care about sparing his feelings. There were no gentle falsehoods to soothe him, he did not deserve it. She hoped he lay awake at night thinking of his sins.

"Is he really such a fool?" he asked her with an eyebrow raised, arrogant and unrepentant.

"He's not," she defended sharply, and for a brief instant, there was a flash of something like resentment in his face. It was gone before she could be sure that it had been real at all, but she liked to think that it had. The thought of his jealousy was coldly thrilling, not because he loved her, but because he wished to possess her and at her darkest hours, in the deepest and most unthinkable places in her mind, she wished it too. Forgetting herself and becoming _his_ would be an escape, a total relinquishment of everything that it meant to be her. She would not have to be strong and stand on weary feet, she could collapse, allow him to carry her down and lay her in the softly rocking boat on his River Styx and drift there forevermore, unburdened by the thought of the unselfish man she was destroying and the task of being the woman who inspired such faith in her friends and family. She did not want their faith; it was suffocating. What she wanted was to howl and scream and tear the sky apart with her fury at the injustice of it all- that she should be left to stand alone, hunted and torn, because there was no one who seemed to understand. Her family was a world apart, living a life so distinctly separate that it seemed they hardly spoke the same language. Her friends waited for _her_ to guide them, because she was bold and strong and clever, because she had always stepped forward. And James- sweet, goodhearted, brave James- was blinded by his own desire to see perfection in her.

But _he_ did not see perfection. _He_ saw something else in her, something which drew him to her, something which sparked between them and flowed across their entwined limbs like cold rain, and it was not love, but _fear_. It was the thing which held them together, two lost souls wandering the frozen planes of limbo. Together they swam in it, fell into terror's frigid waters and pressed their faces against the cold and unyielding ice which held them under. James walked above, his shoulders unburdened by the fact that he was brave and strong and he chose to stand and fight. But she did not have the same choices. She was one of the hunted, one of those who would be killed or tortured without a second thought when the time came. How could she do anything but fight, however unwillingly? And when James, perfect, courageous James, asked her to be his wife, how could she say no? It would mean explaining to him that he had done nothing wrong and that she hated him for it. It would mean shattering the illusion that she was wonderful and happy, and she was sure, if anyone could see the trembling, dirty, hurtful little girl beneath, they could never love her as they did now. She had rushed forward in her eagerness and now she stood at the edge of a cliff with the wind snatching at her bitterly, pulling her toward the precipice, and only now did she realize that it was far too late to back away.

He saw the fear in her and he drank it in with monstrous pleasure. He, too, stood at the edge, but he had never had an opportunity to change his course if he had wanted to. He had been marched to the peak with spears at his back and all that remained was for him to leap. But he lingered here with her for a moment, his patience for conversation run dry after only a few words. The pretense of humanity was fading faster, they were suspended in the air for the briefest of seconds at the height of their momentum, his eyes as flat and dark as a candle suddenly blown. And then they began to fall.

His touch was an earthquake, a low and growing tremble which sent everything in her head crashing to the floor. Or perhaps it was the creature within her rising, stretching its limbs into her own, opening its glowing eyes and seeing through hers, its wrath and wickedness flowing through her hands as she pulled him tightly enough to make her fingers ache. His breath and lips were hot at her neck and her gasp was both uncontrolled and expected. She opened her eyes before she realized she had closed them and his gaze was on her, inches away. He liked to see the struggle in her eyes. It fascinated him, the way she fought so hard against the dark and hungry stranger that kissed him with her lips. She could see the detached curiosity in his face. He pressed himself against her and watched the way her breath quickened to the beat of her reluctant heart.

She was a blossom, a beautiful and fragile flower, a lily; she belonged in the sun and he had brought her into the darkness to watch her wither and fade. He liked to destroy beautiful and delicate things, because he could, because he was cultivating an evil within himself, because he was, beneath it, so very _afraid_.

She let the shadowed stranger which shared her skin take over. She always did, in the end. She retreated into the shelter of the warmth of his skin on hers which told her that they were both still alive, that she was, for the moment, not alone. The woman who sighed and gasped and ran her hands over him was entirely separated from the one who watched his cold black eyes and thought of what it would be like if they did love one another. It would be such sweet redemption, clean snow falling over the bloody trenches she had dug in the ground of her Garden of Eden. His hands were in her hair and the flowers shriveled and her skin flushed with fever. His low voice was in her ear and it spread smoke in her blood.

After some time it was quiet. Her breath had quieted to a soft and slow rhythm marking the passage of time. She sat on the edge of his mattress, her hair bundled over one shoulder in a careless twist, as he lay with his hands behind his head. He was as motionless as a statue and in his stillness he was regal, superior, the line of his shoulders and the flat stone black of his eyes like carved marble. His eyebrows flicked upward and she was pulled forward as though he had tugged on her puppet strings. His dark hair, so like his brothers, lay upon his forehead in sweat-slicked lines. Her hands braced her on the hard planes of his stomach and she leaned forward, willing, unresisting, possessed.

She stopped. Her eyes had raked his form and gorge was rising in her throat before she realized what she had seen. He was the dark, regal form of a statue in the shadow but there was a dark blot on his pale skin.

"What is that?" she whispered.

His eyes were lazy when they slid to follow her gaze. They came back to her face faster. A strange expression crossed his face. He moved, jerked upright.

"Did you think I wouldn't?"

She was backing away, her hands supporting her as she half crawled, half slid to the other end of the mattress. There was a rushing like wind in her ears. What was quiet before was now unbearable noise, a roaring growing louder every second. Icy cold was crawling across her skin and it burned like fire but chilled her. He was watching her with a studious expression, memorizing the horror that was shaping itself in her mouth. His hand reached up and he drew a thumb across the supple curve of her lower lip.

"He's going to win, you know that, right? This silly war, all of the politics," he said in a low voice, and there was a gleam of something like satisfaction in his gaze.

"Politics?" she gasped, feeling dizzy with horror. "That's what you think this is about?"

There was cool contempt radiating from him as he watched her gather her robes and belongings. She was not moving quickly enough, not keeping time with the frantic pounding in her head. She was trembling. The full force of what she had done, the things that lay broken in her uncaring wake, seeming to be gathering just outside the room, waiting to crash down upon her with the force of a tidal wave. She could still feel his touch on her as though it was poisonous, and the first tingles were just beginning to sink through her skin, warning her of the painful and inevitable death that was to follow.

He stood up. He made no effort to stop her, though his eyes followed her movements closely. She was visited by a passionate urge to turn and scream at him but she was certain that if she opened her mouth she would be sick. An endless mantra was pulsing in her head in time to her heartbeat, growing louder and repeating, _what have I done?_

"You'll die for that, you know that, right?" she asked him finally, the question bursting out of her in an explosive rush.

"Is that a threat?" he replied, raising his eyebrows at her.

"It's a fact, you fool," she insisted. "And if you get your way, maybe I will too."

He said nothing to that, merely folded his arms. He moved toward her and she stepped back, repulsed. He was undeterred, in fact, he looked expressionless as ever, but he moved an arm to block her as she stormed toward the door. It was the arm which stopped her before she even touched it, the arm that was marked with the ugly burn. Her eyes widened as she stared at it, never having seen one so close before. It was revolting, the very essence of evil undulating on his otherwise smooth skin, rippling over his veins. It seemed to be whispering to her as she watched it swell.

He turned her face with the other arm and bent his lips to her face. He kissed the curve of her cheek, too hard, so roughly that she was sure it would bruise. Her head tilted without conscious thought, she was, for the briefest instant, invaded and controlled once more by the wicked presence which bent her to his will. He was gravity and she endlessly falling, tumbling toward the Earth- but then his arm touched hers and though she was surely imagining it, she thought she could feel a heat, a glowing aura of cruelty from the mark burned into him.

"Wash the Mudblood off of you before you go back to Him," she suggested, jerking away from him.

He watched her go. His face was impassive again.


End file.
